


what ifs and maybes

by helsinkibaby



Category: The Flying Doctors
Genre: Angst, Canon Het Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Het, Missing Scene, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 05:19:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13116891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: Chris finds Tom asleep in the hospital.





	what ifs and maybes

**Author's Note:**

> Missing scene for “The Chips are Down”
> 
> Theme ; words beginning with s  
> Prompt: Any, Any, Sleepy  
> https://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/543542.html?thread=16002102#cmt16002102

Ever since the first victims of the bus crash began to be wheeled through the hospital doors, like all the other staff, Chris has hardly stopped to draw breath. It’s finally started to quieten down now and although she’s been doing this for long enough to know that she’s tempting fate to even think about it, she finds her thoughts straying nonetheless to her bed, a warm and comfortable cocoon of blankets and a solid eight hours sleep. It’s a pipe dream at the moment - she still has patients to check, charts to sign, and in any case, she knows the adrenaline rush will take a while to subside, that sleep will be a long time coming tonight. 

But still, it’s a nice thought. 

A nice thought that is knocked out of her mind completely by the sight she sees when she turns a corner, a sight that knocks the breath from her body temporarily. 

She knows that Tom hadn’t got a lot of sleep the previous night - young Jason has taken quite the shine to him and had decided that if he couldn’t sleep, then Tom shouldn’t be able to either. Between that and the fact that he and David had been the first medics on the scene of the crash, Chris knows he’d been running pretty much on empty by the time he got to the hospital with the last of the patients. She’d thought he’d last until he got home but evidently not, because there in front of her is Tom, sitting on one of the gurneys, fast asleep. 

But that’s not what makes Chris’s breath catch in her suddenly dry throat, makes her heart pound in her chest as she battles sudden tears. 

That’s because Tom is not alone. He’s leaning into a corner of the corridor, the walls supporting his weight, and wrapped in his arms, his back against Tom’s chest, is young Jason Nichols. For once, the little boy is perfectly still and silent, his eyes closed, his cheeks flushed with sleep. His breathing exactly matches Tom's, with Tom's chin resting on top of his head and they make quite a peaceful picture there, the two of them sound asleep in the aftermath of all the chaos they've seen today. 

But Chris isn't thinking about today when she looks at them. 

She's thinking of the past, of the too few nights when she got to see Tom asleep like that, those few months when they were together and in love and all was right in her world. She'd thought they were going to be together forever, had even begun making plans for a life together, in Cooper's Crossing, in the city, she hadn't really cared which. She'd just wanted to be with him. 

She's honest enough with herself to admit that she'd never really stopped wanting that, and his return to Cooper's Crossing had reminded her of that fact. 

She's thinking of the past, of waking up in Tom's arms, but this sight is also a tableau of a future that she'd once dreamed of, and that's what makes her pounding heart match her steps as she moves towards them, drawn there as if by some magnetic pull. Something about their colouring, she decides, those two heads of black hair so close together. If you didn't know differently, you could easily mistake the two of them for father and son, especially when they were lying together like that. For a moment, Chris sees a future that could have been hers, walking into a house somewhere and seeing Tom asleep on the couch, holding their son like that. Once upon a long ago, she’d let herself dream of that, wanting it then and she wants it still, wants it with a depth and a breadth and a ferocity that surprises even her. 

She's standing in front of them now, close enough that she can hear them breathing in and out completely in synch with each other. It makes her smile even if her throat aches with tears and she sees, as if it belongs to someone else, her hand reaching out to touch Tom's hair, the same way he'd used to play with hers back in the day. 

Of course, he's a doctor so he's used to being woken at a moment's notice, a damn sight more rudely than that too. So his eyes open straight away and he blinks, sleepy and dazed, up at her. A frown appears on his face, like he doesn't know where he is and why she's there too, and when he says her name in a hoarse whisper that sends shivers down her spine, there is a world of questions in that one syllable, a world of questions that she doesn't nearly have the answers for. 

So she just smiles, shakes her head and strokes his cheek. "It's nothing," she whispers. "Go back to sleep." 

He leans into her touch, a smile on his face that's decidedly wistful, or maybe that's just her wishful thinking again. But his eyes flutter shut and he nods against Jason's head and he's out like a light in seconds. 

Chris stays there a moment longer, lets her fingers wander over Tom's hair as her minds wanders over what ifs and maybes. Then she shakes herself, goes off to find a blanket and drapes it over the two of them before she finishes her rounds, signs her charts and heads for home. 

It's a long time before she falls asleep.


End file.
